The Japanese police continues today to try to clarify the motives of the killer of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Kyodo news agency reported

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Tetsuya Yamagami said during questioning that he felt anger toward "a specific organization" that he believed was linked to Abe.

He denied shooting the 67-year-old former Japanese prime minister because of his political views, police said.

Yamagami, 41, later clarified that he had originally intended to attack the leader of a religious group.

However, he then decided to kill the former Japanese prime minister, who he believed was also connected to the organization in question.

Police did not reveal the religious group in question.

Yamagami shot Abe at point-blank range as he delivered an impromptu speech outside a railway station in western Nara prefecture yesterday - two days before elections for Japan's upper house of parliament are due tomorrow.

The killer approached from behind and opened fire with a homemade weapon.

Police searched Yamagami's home yesterday and found explosives and homemade weapons.

Shinzo Abe's killer pleads guilty

The killer is unemployed.

He worked for a company in the industrial sector from the fall of 2020 until May, when he left.

Yamagami previously served three years in the naval units of the Japan Self-Defense Force until August 2005.

A hearse took Shinzo Abe's body from the hospital in Nara, where an autopsy was performed, to the capital, Tokyo, this morning.

His wife Akie Abe was also traveling in the car.

US President Joe Biden telephoned Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida today to express his condolences.

Biden noted "the importance of Abe's lasting legacy, his commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region and the launch of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Japan, the United States, Australia and India."

He also expressed "unwavering confidence in the strength of Japanese democracy."

Japan wants to "protect democracy without succumbing to violence," Kishida told Biden.

Today is the last day of the election campaign in Japan.

Elections for the upper house of parliament tomorrow are expected to be won by the ruling coalition led by Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party.

Leaders from around the world offered their condolences on the death of Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister.

He stepped down in 2020 after nearly eight years in office.

Before that, Abe was prime minister once again - for a one-year period from September 2006 to the same month of 2007.

Shinzo Abe

murder